The Braves seem pretty set on trading Jair Jurrjens. I’m OK with that. They have oodles of starting pitching coming up through the system and they’re not going to be able to keep both Jurrjens and Tommy Hanson as each of them get expensive. Trade JJ and get a shortstop or a bat or some good depth or something, right?

But they won’t trade him just anywhere. Jon Heyman says that the Braves will not trade Jair Jurrjens within the division, thereby rendering inquiries from the Marlins and Nationals moot. I get that. As a lot of people say, you don’t want your former player to come back and haunt you over and over.

Although in this case I choose to believe it’s more like the rules that apply to selling a used car to someone you’re gonna have to see a lot of. I mean, I like Jurrjens, but I have little faith that his knees aren’t going to continue to give him trouble or that his strikeout rate is going to come back to bite him and that ERA is gonna balloon up. Maybe Frank Wren doesn’t care, but I think it would be awkward to see the exec you ripped off 18 times a year.

Dallas isn’t in the Lakers division….They are in the Southwest and Lakers in the Pacific. You have it confused with Conference. The Braves can trade JJ to another National League team, just not one in the NL East. I say take what you can get and let them worry about him.

What this tells me is that Wren has no faith in the replacements for Jurriens–I don’t care how many young pitchers they have in their system. Where was all of that quality last year when they blew their playoff spot. If you have confidence in your team and in your farm system, you trade the guy to the team that gives you the best deal–no matter what division.

They blew that playoff spot because of a shoddy offensive output, those youngins did the best they could with what little time they had, but if Brian McCann and Martin Prado turn into choke artists on you…whatcha gonna do? Hell Dan Uggla didn’t even show up until July.